begins with a scene in which Arthur Anderson employees launch a paper-shredding frenzy after an alert from an Enron executive to destroy evidence, while one of the attorneys sings The Sound of Shredding (to the tune of The Sound of Music).

Jeff Skilling, Andy Fastow and the rest of the Enron gang will have a new home very soon.

No, not prison. The stage.

Enron — the Musical makes its world premiere tonight at Lambert Hall, where it will play for two weekends.

Unlike its high-flying, glitzy subject matter, the musical is a shoestring operation. Its performances will take place on the set of the current children's show Santa's Magic Timepiece. With his best Mickey Rooney "we're putting on a show" enthusiasm, producer/writer/director Mark Fraser insists that backdrop will work just fine.

Fraser, who earns his living as a manufacturers' representative, wrote the show's lyrics, too — but not the music. The show uses that favorite device of revues, comedy clubs and piano bars: parody lyrics attached to familiar show tunes.

Enron opens as the staff of accounting giant Arthur Andersen follows an alert from Enron to destroy all evidence. David Duncan, a lawyer at Andersen, croons The Sound of Shredding (to the tune of The Sound of Music).

At the peak of his power, Skilling sings (to the tune of Springtime for Hitler), "Springtime for Skilling and Enron stock!"

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To the tune of Thank Heaven for Little Girls, Fastow and henchman Michael Kopper sing:

Thank heaven for off-book deals

For off-book deals improve our balance sheet ...

They raised our stock and fooled folks on Wall Street

Those partnerships we set up were appealing

But now they're not 'cause we got caught for fraud and stealing.

And so it goes, through such ditties as How Do You Solve a Problem Like Jeff Skilling?, 76 Indictments ("came down today / with 110 execs out on bail") and Get Me to the Court on Time.

Fraser's script frames the 28 songs with an out-of-work ex-Enron employee (called Ex-Enron) and his wife telling friends how "America's most innovative company" (according to Fortune magazine) became the ultimate symbol of corporate corruption. Ex-Enron and his wife must have been pretty well-connected, because they can tell everything that happened to everyone — even stuff it took investigators years to uncover.

But that's how things operate in this show: Even before the fall, all the musical's characters somehow know things will end in bankruptcy and convictions.

Beyond his column for Inside Texas Running, Fraser's chief writing experience has been material for the Houston Press Club's Gridiron Show. Enron grew out of several songs he wrote for the 2002 Gridiron — songs he turned in too late to be used. He stowed them in a desk drawer, then in 2004 looked at them again.

"They were too good to waste," he said. "So I decided I'd just write a show to use them."

He researched the scandal. "Everything in the show comes from fact," he says. "I wanted it to be informative. I tried to create a balance between funny and semiserious, because you can't have the audience laugh all the time. They get tired."

Fraser recently added a reference to Lay's death, noting that any death is sad — but not letting Lay off the hook as a corporate crime czar.

Tuesday night, the six-person cast rehearsed in the den of Fraser's house in Timbergrove Manor. They plowed through the material with determined chutzpah, giving some turns the rollicking camaraderie of a party entertainment.

Each actor holds down a half-dozen roles, from big shots like Lay and Skilling to minor conspirators and clueless victims. There were frequent pauses as the cast negotiated transitions between the many dialogue scenes and the songs, hurrying to change costume and take their places for each new bit.

Fraser's decision to seriously document Enron's rise and fall — spanning such chapters as the California energy crisis, the broadband fiasco and the Nigerian barge deal — makes his lines a mouthful for his cast. After all, deregulation, energy trading and broadband Internet are hardly the stuff of musical theater.

Asks one character: "You mean we sold them back their own energy at a higher price because of a shortage we created by taking it in the first place?"

In an earlier form, Enron had a workshop at Stages in summer 2005.

"After hearing the concept and two songs, we jumped at it," said Kenn McLaughlin, Stages' managing director.

"The workshop was packed all three times," McLaughlin said. "People laughed at the first lines of each song. There were some clever lyrics. But after a while, you felt you'd heard this joke already. We felt it didn't go deep enough to do justice to the theme."

Stages declined further involvement, citing in part worries about the music's copyrights. Fraser insists his use of the music is perfectly legal, citing a Supreme Court decision that approved a lyricist's parody of Pretty Woman.

"Justice Souter wrote in his opinion that 'parody is an American way of life.' " Fraser proclaims.

Regardless of the copyright issue, with Ken Lay dead and his co-conspirators sentenced, isn't Enron past its prime as a subject for satire?

"Not at all," Fraser said. "I think people finally are ready to laugh at Enron."

If an author's optimism alone could swing it, Enron — the Musical might run longer than the sentences of its lead characters.